Small Business Strategies

While I am really excited about how the first quarter has turned out at KoMarketing Associates, there is always room for growth. As lead partner in our organization, 2011 has brought on a myriad of new challenges, from partnership development, to lease negotiation, to employee relations.

The most difficult but rewarding has certainly been the latter. While I’m no stranger to management, it is different when the buck truly does stop with me.

The one competitive SEO advantage small business owners still have is speed.

The small business owner should take heed of Weip.net’s recent post, The Day All Large Companies “Got It”. There are distinct advantages that larger companies have only begun to realize when it pertains to a search engine optimization strategy.

Just like the retail giants Wal-Mart, Blockbuster or the Home Depot moved into a community and force small storefronts to closed their doors, the same may happen to the keyword strategies the online business holds, when big business makes online marketing (not just SEO) a priority.

There’s no shortage of resources for learning about SEO. From books to blogs to conferences to articles, the list is endless. The challenge for business owners new to SEO is where to go and what to read first.

Do you own a small business? Are you interested in SEO and want to use online channels to drive sales and revenue for your business?

While many business owners want search engine traffic they don’t understand the fundamentals that enable websites to “work” online.

The danger in that the lack of knowledge is that it can lead to a very uninformed decision when selecting SEO services or working on an SEO strategy.

Here is a list resources small business owners interested in search engine marketing should read first, before engaging in an SEO strategy or hiring an SEO consultant. I would bet the bulk of this material could be read and worked through in less than a week’s time.

There are many reasons why SEO consultants recommend that their clients create a blog for search engine rankings. However, if you are one of those clients (or have read this recommendation online) and are only blogging because of the potential SEO benefit then you really should reconsider this strategy.

My wife is a big “Ugly Betty“, “Grey’s Anatomy” fan and still appreciates television without the Tivo or DVR (although she’ll go to ABC.com if we miss something). Even though I’m not a dedicated viewer, Thursday nights represent a bit of family time, and fortunately, only my physical presence is really required.

Or why good information can still lead to bad results
There’s clearly a difference between making a search engine marketing recommendation and implementing that recommendation, be it onpage search engine optimization, social media strategy, PPC ad copy, etc etc. Not only is the direct recommendation subject to varying degrees of interpretation, but so are the moving parts that are related.

With the holiday weekend past us, dogs are once again allowed on Nauset Beach and most of the seasonal businesses on Cape Cod are assessing the success (or failure) of another tourist season on the Cape. Late fall and winter probably will get filled up with the obligations we’ve missed or delayed, preparation for the holidays and some time for business development. In addition to everything you’ll be doing offline, here are some recommendations for what you can do online, as it relates to the building your search engine marketing success for the Summer of 2008.

If you take a course in “Leadership”, you’ll have a round table discussion on the qualities of a “leader” and it’s highly unlikely that “self-promotion” and “personal marketing plan” will be traits that get brought up. But the context of most traditional leadership discussions are in relation to a immediate, micro-environment that you are working within or traditional, offline spheres of influence.

I just updated my Google Maps information and if small businesses are not using this free service (especially in situations where local/regional relevance matters), than they are missing out on a great opportunity. I wrote a post documenting the general process for business owners to submit information to Google Maps before, so I’m writing this post as a logical extension, highlighting the process of updating business information.

Updating Your Google Maps Submission
For whatever reason, Google has decided that my business name is “untitled“, which probably is an issue when it pertains to click-thru rates and the overall brand awareness of my company. Since I changed my mailing address the other day as well, it made sense to go into my account and make some edits.